McGill application for 2019

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I'm just wanting some general advice for my McGill application. I graduated from Dal this May with a 3.79 CGPA, honours, and volunteer work at the Halifax Legal Aid clinic. I'm applying to McGill for 2019, I'm taking the LSAT in December - currently testing at a 150 which is making me really nervous. However, I think with a solid personal statement I might still stand a chance for entry. Right now I'm writing my personal statement about the ways in which the law has intersected in my life and how that made me interested in localized issues of poverty and inequalities. Anyway - super stressed so any advice would be appreciated...

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Unless you're consistently testing above 160 as an average of your scores over a decent sample size, don't write the lsat in December. Tbey average lsats so you can't just rewrite and do better (assuming you do). You don't need to and your GPA is strong enough without it (assuming other requirements are also strong enough).

Obviously keep studying for the lsat - especially games since score jumps are most often seen in that section. But don't write unless you get your preptesting scores up.

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I would tend to agree with pzabbythesecond. If McGill is the only school you are planning on applying to then my personal suggestion would be to proceed with great caution regarding the LSAT at this point if you are looking for the most attractive way to present your application. I'm not sure how your GPA converts into a 4.0 scale, but a 3.79 is very impressive on face value and it sounds like you have some great additional extracurriculars to bolster your application as well.

From my personal knowledge anything below a 160 (maybe a 157) would not been seen as positive towards your application. Keep in mind that McGill does not require the LSAT and does not discriminate against applicants for not writing it. However, if you do choose to write it, regardless of your score, there is no turning back, you will always have to disclose it to admissions.

Another thing to consider is that if you do not write the LSAT McGill may take it as a sign that you are very serious about McGill in particular as you could not apply to any other common law schools without it, so that could potentially work in your favour as well.

I don't want to discourage you from the path that you are taking for yourself, I just hope I could provide some insight that I have acquired as a successful applicant and current McGill Law student.

My advice at this point would be to convert your CGPA into the 4 point scale McGill uses and see how you sit on it. If it ends up being significantly lower, then maybe it is time to put the petal to the metal on studying for the LSAT to see if you can bump up your score, but otherwise, I would channel your energy into preparing a stellar application without the LSAT.

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I don't want to get into the specific details of the situation under discussion, but I want to make a general point about how students so often misread the employment market, and this is a great example of how that happens.
Applying for a job is not the same as applying for admission to a program at school. It's not the same as applying for an award. It's not the same as applying for accommodation for the LSAT, or from some office at your school. In all of those other cases and examples, the people considering you for admission, awards, accommodation, etc. are all concerned about being fair and objective. In all of those cases, the process matters, and everyone agrees it matters. This is not to say that bias and subjectivity are entirely eliminated. It happens, sometimes, and it's unavoidable. But the process is at least designed to avoid it and everyone agrees that's the way it should be.
An employer doesn't care about any of that. They just need to get the job done. At a large employer you may have at least some cushioning from the immediate realities of the workplace if a decision is being made in a formal HR process. But even there, they're aware of the realities. At a smaller employer, it's completely in your face at all times.
Speaking as an employer, if I'm looking at a candidate who has a sympathetic situation at home, I'm not thinking "what a shame they couldn't show their full potential in school" I'm thinking "how often is this going to fuck me in the future if I hire this person?" Now you can all yell and scream that I'm a terrible person for thinking this. But I have very few people to rely on. And everything my employee isn't getting done is one more problem for me, personally, to solve. And I don't imagine there's a single employer out there who is saintly enough to just ignore that factor and to hire the more "deserving" candidate, even though there's a fair chance the more deserving candidate is going to make their own personal and professional lives suck over an extended period of time.
If you can't understand what I just wrote, or you think it's somehow wrong, it's because you're still thinking like a kid. You imagine the world owes you things, and it doesn't. I'm going to hire someone who will help me do my job and make me money. I'm not a social agency. I may feel personal sympathy for certain factors in your life. And I'm not saying I'm going to turf an existing employee the second they have health or family problems. But you think I'm going to willingly create that situation for myself if I don't have to? You're insane.
I don't have a perfect answer for how to navigate the marketplace if you are dealing with factors like that. But if you at least maintain the appropriate attitude towards what's really going on, you'll do a better job of sounding reasonable, mature, and realistic about it. You never, ever, ever want to sound like "here's why I haven't been able to perform, so please take this into account when evaluating my poor performance." You want to sound like "here's everything I am doing and will continue to do to ensure that my personal issues aren't stopping me from getting the job done, and done well." It isn't a perfect answer. There is no perfect answer. But at least you won't sound like a kid who thinks that the coach has to play every player on the team just to be fair - even the ones who suck. The real world just isn't like that.

I spent a couple days at a low T1 law school in the US before leaving to come back to Canada and apply for this current cycle.
Your success depends on what school you attend, it’s location (in terms of a given legal market), and your ability to do well in law school. You should consider that the US legal market, as a whole, is heavily saturated in comparison to Canada. From what I’ve been told, jobs can be hard to come by — even if your a US citizen with ties to a given area. You should also consider the immigration system in the USA, which is family (not skills) based and therefore harder to break into even if you do well in law school. Firms will most likely look at you different if you’re not a US citizen or a PR — you’ll haft to stand out. To be eligible for work, you’ll need to get a firm to sponsor you for a H1B which is quite costly, and as such, not a small favor on the part of the firm or you’ll need to use the TN visa under NAFTA. I’m not sure how firms will view a foreigner working on a TN. I’m a little more pessimistic in this regard as well.
In my case, I came back home after attending orientation because the risks seemed to far outpace the potential rewards. I wasn’t at a T14 and neither was I in a large legal market like LA, New York, Houston, Chicago, Washington DC, etc. Even though I was given a full tuition scholarship +, I didn’t like the feeling that it was highly possible, indeed perhaps probable, that I’d finish law school without a job in the USA and then hold a subpar law degree for use in Canada which would have to be upgraded via the NCAs.
I agree with the general consensus on this topic, if you’re not going to a T14 school and you’re not a US citizen, don’t attend law school in the USA. You’ll hear stories of people who made it, but remember that there is an even larger number of people who didn’t and consider it a huge mistake.
What school are you thinking about attending?